Ready for this ? PIRATE
FBI Ignored Its Own Warrant And Search Policies To Seize Millions From People's Safety Deposit Boxes
from the [hangs-GONE-FISHIN'-sign-in-FBI-office-window] dept
This brief clip from an FBI training film helps explain the actions undertaken by agents during a raid on a secure storage facility earlier this year:
In March of this year, the US Attorney in Los Angeles, California secured an indictment against a secure vault company, alleging the company was engaged in money laundering, drug trafficking, and hiding taxable assets. None of the company's employees or owners were indicted.
FBI agents spent five days turning US Private Vaults upside down. Agents apparently emptied every safety deposit box housed by the business. They did this in complete contradiction of the limits imposed on them by the FBI's own warrant affidavit. . .
The FBI could have taken custody of the boxes without opening them and sought warrants for those implicated by the investigation. Instead, the FBI agents emptied the boxes while still on the premises, engaging in dozens of searches not authorized by any warrant. . .
The FBI says it's only willing to return items from about a quarter of the boxes its agents searched and seized without a warrant.
The FBI has returned the contents of about 75 boxes and plans to give back the items found in at least 175 more, because there was no evidence of criminality, Mrozek said. Federal agents have not determined who owns what was stored in many other boxes.
That's the latest from Thomas Mrozek, the spokesperson for the Los Angeles US Attorney's office. The FBI and federal prosecutors are hoping to take ownership of as much as possible from the remaining boxes, all of which is detailed in the very long inventory list compiled by the agents who performed the raid.
This is extremely ugly. Unfortunately, the use of civil forfeiture shifts some of the burden to those whose assets were seized. The government doesn't really have to do anything. If claimants don't come forward before June 24, those unclaimed assets will become government property, whether or not they had anything to do with criminal activity.
Those that do file a claim will have to deal with a convoluted and expensive process that helps ensure the government will still get to keep most of what it seized under the guise of performing an inventory. The burden of proof for the government is extremely low. And it's apparently telling judges a dog gave agents permission to engage in a bunch of warrantless seizures.
Drug-sniffing dogs at the store during the raid alerted to traces of drugs on most of the money found in boxes, FBI agent Justin Palmerton claimed in a court statement. The boxes containing that cash are subject to criminal investigation, he said.
This claim is stupid as fuck and hopefully won't be given any respect from judges that are subjected to it. Most currency contains trace amounts of drugs. That's common knowledge. But the FBI isn't raiding banks just because a dog alerted near the ATM. This is a completely disingenuous claim and, by itself, isn't evidence of anything more than the FBI's willingness to use literally anything to justify its warrantless acquisition of other people's property.
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